A while ago I nearly lost one of my Wheeleez balloon wheels while I was out on thewater.

I'm not sure how it came loose, as I'm very careful to make sure it's clipped onto theaxle correctly, but it did.

I was blissfully unaware as it floated off and the only indication something was wrongwas when I had a 'hit' on one of my trolling lines. Luckily I looked around and saw thatthe wheel had tapped the line as it drifted off. I did a rather repaid about-turn andmanaged to scoop the escapee wheel up with my landing net.

I'm now the proud owner of a nice, new Trax 2-30 cart and since replacement wheelsfor this mother run at over 100 bucks, I want to try and avoid loosing one overboard.

So I made a quick and easy little 'wheel retention system' as insurance against this.

Firstly I removed the four bolts from the hub and took out the inboard disc that keepsthe hub bushes in place. I then drilled two 6mm holes into the plastic between two ofthe bolt-holes.

I then threaded a short (about 10cm/3") section of 5mm bungee cord through theholes and tied it off at each end, making sure the knot was pulled as tight as possible.This leaves a loop of about 2.5cm/1" protruding from the outside of the disc.

The trickiest part of the operation was getting the bolts and the disc back in place,as the two halves of the rim were pushed apart by the pressure of the tyre. I had to almost completely deflate the tyres to be able to get the bolts to reach rightthrough.

The other slightly fiddly part was to get the knots in the bungee to fit under the disc. It did require a bit of pushing and squeezing, but it fitted in the end - this iswhy it was important to pull the knots as tight as possible, to make them as smallas possible, in order to fit under the disc.

Once back together, the wheels are popped back onto the axle. As you can see,the loops are pretty unobtrusive.

The final piece in the puzzle is a length of bungee cord with two clips/hooks on each end. I used a 60cm length of 8mm bungee and attached it to the hooks sothere was just enough stretch to allow it to be clipped over the wheel loops andwrapped once around the axle.

The loops aren't under a huge amount of stretch, but it's enough to prevent thewheels from sliding off the axle, should they come loose.

Hi Mike,You've got me thinking a bit more about your mod and wondering if an eye nut may also work attached to one of the hub bolts?Do you know what size the bolts are? Are they the same as the Trax2 wheel bolts? I guess it would be an imperial bolt?Looks like an M6 is the smallest eye nut available here. I suppose one bolt could be replaced with an eyebolt if a long enough one was available.

Yep, that was my first choice - a stainless loop of some sort, under one of the bolts.

I started with a twisted piece of heavy-guage stainless wire, but it didn't look nice, and getting it under the standard bolt was a pain.

Those eyelets look like a nice idea though.

The bolts are longer than the trax 2 ones - I'd say they're around 13cm long x 6mm.I'm not sure if the thread is imperial, as the nuts and bolts are both metric in size.I guess you could get a slightly (metric) longer bolt, then drill out the thread on the eyeletnut/bolt it on?